Oprah's Favorite New Gadget — This page requires Flash 9. Download it here. — This summer, Oprah received a gift that she says changed her life. “I'm telling you, it is absolutely my new favorite thing in the world,” she says. — Meet the Amazon Kindle&trade …

Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Beta — Hi there, Mike Nash here. — As you know we are getting ready to talk about Windows 7 at the PDC next week. Before we do that, I thought I would give you an update on our latest work for Windows Vista. — We are committed to continually improving Windows …

Apple donates $100,000 to fight same-sex marriage ban* — Apple is contributing $100,000 to fight Proposition 8, the California ballot measure that would define marriage as only between a man and a woman. The company's announcement today came as the fight over Prop. 8 grows hotly contested …

Box.net iPhone application for FREE on AppStore — Well that sure was fast. Just the other day I sat down with Sean from Box.net to discuss the online data storage service's plans for the mobile space. In talking about how Box.net was gunning to cover the mobile, desktop …

Reading The Guardian, full-text style — We've always used Reader to keep up to date on news and current events and today it just got a little easier: The Guardian just moved all of their RSS feeds from partial to full-text. They are the first major newspaper in the world to do so, and this is, well, great news.

A New (Fighter) Jet for Google's Founders? — A company controlled by Google's top executives, including billionaire founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, appears to have added a new plane to its well-equipped fleet: a fighter jet, or more precisely a Dornier Alpha Jet.

Apple Is Ready to Take a Bite of Silicon Valley — Comments from Apple CEO Steve Jobs this week suggested that the cash-rich computer and phone maker might be in a good position to start snapping up struggling tech companies. — During Apple's earnings call Tuesday, Steve Jobs proudly reported …

19,683 Tech Layoffs And Counting — This has been a brutal month or so for tech layoffs. According to our Layoff Tracker, there have been 19,683 job eliminations at tech companies announced since mid-September, and we're not even counting the 24,600 people at Hewlett-Packard who are being eliminated …

Sarah Palin ‘SNL’ Online Clips Soon to Eclipse TV — Among the Top ‘Most Popular’ Shorts on Hulu.com — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's appearance was very good for “Saturday Night Live,” bringing the show its best ratings in 14 years.

What's Apple Really Worth? — That's the $150 billion question and the crux of a simmering debate between Apple fans, Apple customers, Apple investors and Wall Street. — This all hit a head earlier this week when Apple released its fourth quarter earnings and while earnings per share handily beat the Street, revenue came up light.

Yahoo discontinues Vista-optimized IM program — Yahoo Messenger for Vista, now discontinued, offered richer graphics that took advantage of Vista's Windows Presentation Foundation engine. — (Credit: Yahoo) — One of the first applications designed to run only on Windows Vista has been discontinued.

Live: Yahoo Previews Its New Application Platform — I'm here at Yahoo Brickhouse in San Francisco for an event where Yahoo will preview its new Application Platform for developers, the latest effort in an ongoing strategy to be more “open” that was announced last April.

Debate to delay ‘white space’ vote heats up — Several lawmakers and professional sports organizations are urging the Federal Communications Commission to delay a vote on opening spectrum known as “white spaces” for unlicensed use. — On Friday, the Sports Technology Alliance …

New MacBook Pro Does Not Support 8GB RAM (for now) — Luke from iFixit.com was kind enough to test out a new NVIDIA-based MacBook Pro with 8GB of RAM (two 4GB chips) to see if the earlier reports were true. NVIDIA representatives had stated that the new chipsets used in the MacBook and MacBook Pro could support up to 8GB of RAM.

Don't Be Evil? Google Uses Shady Ad Tactics To Edge Out Competitor — Two weeks ago we wrote about Yamli, a powerful transliteration engine that allows users to use their Latin keyboards to type in Arabic text. The service has gotten rave reviews (see the comments), and serves a very large audience that has largely been neglected.